2024

14’ x 8’ x 2’

mild steel, vitreous enamel

Susquehanna Lock House Museum in North Park, Havre de Grace, Maryland

Samara embodies the spirit of mechanical invention and architectural details which pervade historic North Park. The canal, the pivot bridge, the lock, and the neighboring bridges all attest to the beautifully crafted and clever human solutions for getting valuable cargo over and through a complex natural landscape. As our muse, we took the maple samara, or whirligig, nature’s own mechanical wonder for carrying maple seeds across the same landscape. This is a hollow-form steel sculpture full of crafted details and intersections, with bright touches of color in durable vitreous enamel. The base is a WWII-era capstan from the USS Orion, reclaimed from Baltimore’s historic Bethlehem Sparrows Point Shipyard.

With funding support from the Maryland State Arts Council.